FURTHER (GREAT!) READING
THE OBJECT AS HERO.
For hundreds of years, artists have made paintings of arrangements of bowls of fruit, food and drink, flowers and musical instruments. The term 'still life' was coined to describe these paintings of inanimate objects. Photographers' first attempts at still life mirrored these compositions. Although the French call a still life 'nature morte', which literally means 'dead nature', the photographer wants to bring the objects to life.
Great still-life photographs can give us a deeper understanding of, and new relationships with, the things that surround us. They focus in on the qualities of an object. Unlike other forms of photography, still life offers photographers a subject that can be totally controlled, particularly in the studio. Lighting, cameras, lenses, and focus are chosen to help find or enhance the beauty of objects.
To give an object a beautiful visual value, a still-life photographer requires strong ideas and an attention to detail. Still life images created for magazines and advertising make objects look heroic. The photographer accentuates, through light and shadow, an object's qualities to capture it at its most luxurious, appetizing, refreshing or fashionable.
Some objects, such as plants, pebbles and shells, are naturally beautiful and have been the subject of many photographic still life photographers. Man Ray, Nick Knight, Robert Maplepthorpe and Andre Kertesz all photographed flowers, amplifying their beauty in different ways. Man Ray solarized his prints of lilies to show flowers ablaze with light. Nick Knight photographed specimens from the flower and plant collections at the Natural History Museum in London on vivid white backgrounds to accentuate their shapes. Robert Mapplethorpe photographed lilies in the studio to show their sensuality, while Andre Kertesz photographed a 'melancholic tulip' distorted like a cubist painting.
Food is a frequent subject of still life. Irving Penn - a master still-life photographer - created a beautiful image of frozen vegetables straight from his freezer. His American Summer Still Life features a bottle of Coca-Cola, a stick of chewing gum, a baseball and a hot dog smeared in mustard. Perhaps Penn's greatest still life - an image of great simplicity and humor - is of massive diamonds, worth millions of dollars, pictured as if dripping from a household tap.
Photographers have found beauty in the overlooked, the discarded and the ugly, sometimes coming upon readymade compositions in the street or their travels. Edward Weston photographed a cement worker's glove, crusty with dried cement. Irving Penn created an amazing series of photos of cigarette butts he'd picked up on the street, enlarging them to the size of posters and creating beautiful prints that give each cigarette a strange sculptural elegance. The result is an identity parade of battered butts. Martin Parr even found beauty in the front seat of his car after it had been broken into, taking a still life of the gleaming tiny cubes of smashed windshield glass sparkling like gems.
One wonderful benefit of cameras is that they can capture fleeting moments in an instant with a quick and easy click of a button. Thus, cameras are almost always preferred for sporting events and even a relaxed portrait of a group of friends. They tend to capture images in a less biased way than paintings, although you can manipulate a camera's angle and effects to alter people's perceptions of the subject. Because of the innovations in cameras, photography has quickly become a new, exciting art form.
However, there are ways that you can combine the techniques of painting with the ease of photography. Many people lament the fact that they have an artistic eye, but not a hand that is artistic enough to wield a paintbrush. For these people, still life photography may be the outlet for you. Although still life images seem to be relegated to paintings, you can actually capture the same peace and tranquility in a photograph.
As mentioned above, millions of people have taken advantages of the instantaneous nature of a camera, so it may seem nonsensical to go back to photographing motionless, inanimate objects. However, as with the still life paintings of old, creating the scene for this type of picture requires a creative and discerning eye in order to create an interesting composition.
With still life images, you are not only in charge of the photography itself, but you also must create the setting-including lighting and arrangement. This may sound simple, but consider a few aspects. First, do you want the light to be believable, like it is coming through an open window? Do you want it to only highlight one small part of the still life, or bathe all of the objects in a glow? Do you want the light to be harsh and high contrast? These are just a few of the choices you will make as you set-up and then engage with your subject matter.
TIPS
-Choose your subjects carefully. Make sure they have emotional value for you, then think about it aesthetically.
-Use symbolism to connect and create relationships between objects.
-How do you want to present your objects? (ie. in a box, on fabric, what color is the background, etc.)
-Keep backgrounds as simple as possible...or not.
-Use a tripod, or put the camera on a surface/rice bag/etc.